


the man on the radio

by murg



Category: Welcome to Night Vale
Genre: (my own brand anyway), Body Horror, Horror, M/M, Mystery, Post-Episode: e021 A Memory of Europe, Post-Episode: e033 Cassette, Satire, Surreal
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-26
Updated: 2014-03-26
Packaged: 2018-01-16 12:07:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,024
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1346881
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/murg/pseuds/murg
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Your car has stalled and sputtered and eventually collapsed still and dead just two miles past the sign.</p><p><i>Welcome!</i> it had declared boisterously. <i>Welcome! <span class="big">Welcome!</span></i></p>
            </blockquote>





	the man on the radio

The days blend after too long. You have a letter and a promise and every stereotype in the book laid out beside you on the passenger seat of the car. The car that has stopped working. The car that has stalled and sputtered and eventually collapsed still and dead just two miles past the sign. _Welcome!_ it had declared boisterously. _Welcome! Welcome!_ It swims circles in your head, darts behind and ahead of your eyes, tickling them. _Welcome!_

It is noon. The midday sun beats down heavily on the hood of your car and your felt seats lick up every bead of heat they can that floats past the rolled up windows and you are _hot_. It is impossibly bright outside. And the shadows, they are everywhere.

You run your left hand over your face. It trembles and is damp with sweat. Everything is damp with sweat. You are wearing a sweater. Why are you wearing a sweater? You tear it off and slap it away, rubbing your now bare arms. Your fingers are wet, wet with more than sweat but you don't want to consider it. You don't want to consider anything. You feel your forehead, your two eyes, one nose, the gaping hole in your face that sucks in air and vomits it back out.

You gasp.

Your Adam's apple jumps and it's painful. Everything is painful. And numb. Very numb. It's like feeling pinpricks through cotton. You can't explain it. It's a paradox, but your throat, your throat _burns._ It burns and burns and all you can think of is the sonorous croon of _Welcome!_

It haunts you. It stalks you, looks in your windows like a curious voyeur and it is invasive and uninvited. You want to curl inward to hide and protect your organs but you know it will do you no good. You are in a broken car two miles past the _Welcome!_ sign.

The shadows, you think frantically and dully. The shadows. They know. They _know_ and they _whisper._

You wrench open your car door and spill out, onto the desert ground. The sun is hot, but everything is much cooler outside. There is a breeze. If you could sit up, you would feel it on your face instead of a half-hearted hair rustle.

The gravel bites your cheek and you groan. Or you try to. A hiss of air is released like a deflating tire and you surrender.

-

When you blink your eyes away, you are in the same position as before, face down in the dirt. It is night and you are _cold_. The air nips at your back and forces the hair along your body to stand at attention. You don't shiver. You don't have the energy to shiver.

You are in the middle of the desert, lying beside your broken car, two miles from the _Welcome!_ sign. You lick your lips, which is a horrible mistake because your tongue returns with the taste of salt and dried spit coating loose strands of earth.

You blink placidly, slowly, and feel the crinkle of your skin rub against the ground. It's unpleasant, you think distantly. You're tired. You want to go back to sleep. You are cold and you have a sweater in the car but you don't care and why is your back bare? Were you wearing nothing under the sweater?

Pathetic shifting causes the aggravated grumbling of dirt against your navel and confirms this.

Your eyes slide closed. You simultaneously exist and do not exist. You float. You drift. You are a rubber raft, buoyant and molded by the will of the waves lapping at the thin skin of your wrists. It's cold. It's so cold. And your throat is dry and burns. The words, they float up above your inclined head, lighter than air and brighter than light. _Welcome!_ _Welcome!_

But _wait!_

The shadows!

Oh, and you open your eyes and they are _everywhere._ They watch you. There are angels in the darkness, you think blearily, and upon later inspection will decide that didn't make a terrible amount of sense. The shadows, though, they are watching. They are preying on you. They want you. Yes, _you._ You on the dirt, you reading these words as they float across your consciousness. You, with the thin skin and the hundreds of bones and fragile, fragile ego. You, with the sentience and presence of mind not to take your eyes off these words before you, not to dare to remove your eyes; you do not know what will happen if you do, but it will be _horrible,_ more horrible than anything you can imagine and this fate lies behind you, and if you were only to turn your head, just slightly, it would open its maw and swallow your ineffectual flicker of life whole. It would go out, like a candle. A puff. Simple and without consequence. You groan in existential terror.

The shadows don't go away, don't retreat, don't stop watching, but you push yourself up on shuddering limbs and try not to open your mouth. You feel like the shadows would push their spidery fingers straight down your throat if you did. The wet tunnel of your innards, spiraling down, down into acidic oblivion. You do not look behind you. You are focused on the words, on the story, on the screen behind your eyes because you have a horrible feeling and it pricks against the back of your neck, cold kisses from the air molesting you.

The shadows titter. They do not shriek or caw or hiss or cackle or spit or rise into raucous laughter. They _titter,_ almost nervously. You're not offended. You're too afraid to be offended. You fall onto the side of your car, shoulder connecting with the metal and sticking. You hate skin. You swallow. It hurts.

You duck into the car, bending your neck and tucking your arms in as you fall against the console. You meet it squarely with your lower ribs ("false ribs," you think, they're called "false ribs" for some reason) and you grunt. Your left arm shoots out and your thin fingers grasp at the darkness until wool scratches against your knuckles and you seize it.

You're shivering all over. You're convulsing. They say it can get as low as negative twenty in some deserts. But not here. It's probably thirty degrees Fahrenheit. You only know Fahrenheit. You're an American. You're in America. You're somewhere. You're in the desert. You're in the White Sands desert and you think you're _Welcome!_ or some vague sentiment to that effect.

Why are you here again?

You don't know. You have a letter and a book of clichés and an inability to believe in your eyes. You have two eyes, this you know. And one nose. And a hole directly before that, the kind that spiders lay their eggs in. Tiny spiders, trapdoor spiders. They rest. You don't begrudge them. None of this makes sense. You don't know what's happening. The shadows close in. The shadows will know. There are angels out there in the world, this you know, and they all carry the same name.

You close your eyes and open your mouth.

-

You wake up in the same place you closed your eyes in. The car. The car that broke down in the middle of the desert, two miles past the _Welcome!_ sign.

You're sweating again. It's hot outside. And the shadows, they _lurk._

You don't take your eyes off the words. You're not sure how words are in your head, how they're on the screen, but that's the way your mind works and you work with it. Words, on the tip of your tongue, cry to be let out. Your throat hurts, though.

You are positive of one thing and it is this: You need to leave here.

Where are you going? you think as you slink out of the car, sweater wrapped around one sweaty fist and letter clenched in the other. Where are you going? Who is it that knows you think these things? Who is to say you ever _did_ think these things? Who dares to dictate _your_ actions?

You're getting ahead of yourself in the plot, however, and you carefully retrace your thought process back to the route: You need to leave here. Your limbs are trembling. Your thighs' muscles (the quads, you think but the thought is like a quickly passing cirrus cloud overhead) quiver and jump. You take deep breaths, gulping air in like the greedy thing you've always known yourself to be.

Speaking of which, who are you, exactly?

It's not that you don't know. Then this would really be a cliché. You're you, obviously, with the appropriate backstory and driver's license and bank account. You just don't know how or why or where you are. _ Welcome! _the sign said. _Welcome!_ it proclaimed. _Welcome! Welcome!_

You think you're going to be sick.

You are sick.

It lands on the ground, splattering on your six-year-old converse.

You just gasp and swallow. You can't stop swallowing. Your throat is working on autopilot. The shadows are crawling in, like the spiders they are. You know it. Suicidal things and stupid, really. They'll die down there. Are they aware of the average pH value of the human body?

Not that you know that. You're not very into science. A trace of high school chemistry informs you it's probably pretty damn low, though. Because low means acidic, right? Or does it depend? Is only the stomach really acidic? For Christ's sake, why does this concern you right now?

 _Welcome!_ You throw up again.

You need to get out. You need to get away.

You begin stumbling across the desert, the White Sands Desert, the land from Hell, and you have a sweater clenched in one hand and a letter in the other. You are two miles from the _Welcome!_ sign. You are not alone.

-

Your name isn't important, it really isn't, and saying it aloud will only send you reeling into another existential terror. You know this, though you cannot voice how. You cannot voice anything. Your throat hurts now more than ever. You want to collapse onto the ground; you want to weep into your hands and curse the skies, but when you look, you only see a clear blue sky and a blazing white sun and a single cloud in the distance. You're squinting at it, so your vision is far from exact, and the cloud seems to almost…pulse. One second it is white. Another green. You try not to moan in horror. There is a city before you. Or a town. A hamlet. A single dirt road leading past a shack on the edge and into a series of buildings. A gathering of animals of the human species. A civilization.

 _Welcome!_ the sign had boasted.

Right. Right, you think, wiping sweat off your brow only to smear the sweat from your arm all over your face as a result. A strand of hair falls and sticks to your forehead. You didn't know you had hair. You should have, and in retrospect you feel rather silly. You can't see the color of your hair. It's too short to see but long enough to feel. You don't hate it except for the fact that it makes you hotter than ever now that you know about it.

The sun is setting. It assaults your eyes. It does not want you here, you think feverishly. It does not want you here and there is nothing to take its place tonight because moons do not exist, nor mountains, nor cars. There are only _Welcome!_ signs and heat.

The ground whispers to you that you should sleep. You're tired, it reasons. Better find a nice place to stay.

You concur and heave your lead legs forward.

In the end, you fall asleep face-first in the dirt just like the first time. It gives things a nice symmetry, you think.

-

When you wake up, you think of mountains. It's not your first thought, no. Your first thought is consumed by the sun and its heat and your pounding heart from a night of surreal, Lovecraftian nightmares you cannot recall. Your skin is still cold from the night. You feel strange, like your skin does not fit you. The _Welcome!_ sign lurks in the recesses of your consciousness.

You have never seen a mountain in your entire life. If what the beautiful young man from Luftknarp--the one you would have married if he hadn't stared at you like you were…well, never mind--says is true, their existence is not concrete.

Last night, you asserted that mountains did not exist, nor moons, nor cars. Well, you should amend that. Those things _shouldn't_ exist, which doesn't exactly mean that they _don't_ but just thinking about any of them makes you miserable. You don't know why.

When you sit up, the dirt clings to you, desperate not to part. You callously shove its embrace away.

You hate this. You hate all of this and you hate yourself for being so stupid as to come here. You sit and you brood and you stare at the flat plains spread out before you, eternal and comforting in the discomfort of it all. Something about that feels right. Normal. _Appropriate._

The shack's door opens, out of your peripheral. A man steps out. He stares at you. You turn your head and you stare back.

This man from the edge of town's name is Larry Leroy, but you do not know this. You will, though, when he introduces himself as such. But that is later. Right now, you think you see a man with a flannel shirt and a dyed-black mustache.

You clutch a sweater in one sweating hand and a letter in another. You think about opening the letter, but no. No, you cannot do that. The words—the flow of the story, as it were—will not permit it. There is an unspoken rule, a cry for climax and dénouement that holds you fast and ensnares you in its icy predictability, in the promise for eventual irony.

Larry Leroy, this man from the edge of town whose name as of yet you do not know but soon will, is brandishing a shotgun, you notice. He might just kill you with it (a common use for guns.) He might just leave your body for the buzzards and the technicolor clouds. This is not ironic. It might emit some vague pathos, but it’s far from ironic. Irony is an overused word, you think. But maybe that’s your pedantic stance through virtue of your worldly travels and literary education. It doesn’t make you better than anyone, you remind yourself. And Larry Leroy, the man from the edge of town whose name as of yet you do not know but will soon, cocks that shotgun at you, chewing his tobacco and sniffling.

“What’re you doing trespassing on Larry Leroy’s territory?” Larry Leroy, the man from the edge of town whose name you now know, says.

You open your mouth.

No words come out.

Your throat is _very_ sore. You think bitterly of your throat. Curse your throat! Shame on your throat! It is a cruel mistress. A cruel, cruel mistress. None of this makes any sense. It’s simply words. Words, words, words. Is that a famous quote? It must be.

“What’re you doing, boy?” Larry Leroy, the man from the edge of town, says.

That’s right. You _are_ a boy. …A man. Or physically, at least; you’re not going to be presumptuous about your gender’s lifestyle. You don’t understand why the first thing Larry Leroy would inquire of you was your motive behind stumbling drunkenly onto his property or making a point of mentioning you’re a boy. You are confused and you say nothing, your tongue a dead weight.

Larry Leroy, the man from the edge of town, clearly did not get the memo from the sign. You’re supposed to be _Welcome!_ here, after all. The nerve of some people! This place really is no better than Luftknarp. Maybe it’s a cultural difference. Despite your travels, you’ve never been good at those. You are a suspicious creature, admittedly, and you come across as crass and paranoid at times. You still feel the breath of a beast at your back, after all.

Or maybe you’re not like that at all. Whatever. Does it really matter?

Larry Leroy, the man from the edge of town, takes a step toward you and cocks his shotgun. He spits out some chew onto the barren ground. It’s horribly unattractive.

You do what any sensible person would do: You scramble to your feet and you run like hell.

-

Angels in the air, you swear. You hear angels in the air, all around, and they grow _louder_ and _louder_ the closer you get to the town, the town you are supposedly so _Welcome!_ in. They all have the same name and they make your eyes water horribly. But still, you trudge forward.

The shadows recoil from your presence. They resent you. They are greedy and they want this town for themselves. They _hate_ you. Oh, they hate you so _much._ Just _look_ at you.

Your back is wet with sweat and blistering. You do not burn easily; people like you do not burn easily. …Or maybe that’s not true. Maybe that’s an overgeneralization. Maybe it’s some pseudo-factoid you picked out of your own head. You don’t know. You just know it’s a product of light coming in contact with your skin and it _hurts._

There are monsters in that town, you think. You don’t know why. Everything is disjointed. You escaped from Larry Leroy from the edge of town with a sweater in one hand and a letter in the other. You’re tired. Running is hard in the hot sun. You’re wearing jeans, to boot. …Wait, why are you wearing jeans? Why were you in a sweater and jeans if you were on your way to the pleasant town in the desert, a place where you could finally feel _Welcome!_?

You keep walking toward the town. You don’t stop. You don’t dare. This is the way stories work. The protagonist always has to do something stupid.

-

This town is the devil.

Of course, it hasn’t done anything outright devilish _yet,_ but who’s the say it won’t?

You see people in the town. This makes sense. A town is a civilization and a civilization needs people in order to exist, after all. For some reason, you were expecting a ghost town. The fanfare leading up to this moment appears to be the likely perpetrator. You feel a little cheated. Everything is very normal here. You walk down the street, past a regular pizza parlor and a regular barber shop and you roll your eyes. The end. Then the man on the radio speaks.

He is a baritone and he starts with a croon: _“They say when you go to sleep, the government plants dreams of an inevitable wasteland in your head.”_

You stop in your tracks.

This is unfortunate because you stopped in the middle of the road, which has cars (cars _exist?)_ and very cranky people operating said cars who are currently honking their horns and flipping you off and blaring that Godforsaken voice. And then the man on the radio says, _“Greetings from **Night Vale** …..”_

His voice is soft and dark, like the blanket you had on your bed when you were twelve and having growing pains and would hide underneath it because you were old enough to know the monsters under your bed were real and proliferated into your daily life.

It is velvet. It is perfect. It slides into your ears and across your skull. There is something so horribly _normal_ about the words, the concepts expressed by this voice on the radio.

You want to weep for this man on the radio. You want to weep for what his voice does to you. It does not bring light to your life—no. No, it is the opposite. This voice, this voice discussing traffic, this man on the radio is your funeral dirge. You cannot express why. You simply know. It is implicit. It is how the story intends it.

You do not weep. Nobody weeps in the middle of a street, even if he does stand in the middle of the road. Not to say Nobody does do that, but you certainly are right now.

No, you stand and you _listen._

 _“You continue to listen. You’re not entirely sure why, but a chill creeps down your bare spine, like a trickle of ice water. It descends slowly. It has no quarrels with you; it does not wish to leave so quickly. It is not fear. You do not fear the man on the radio,”_ the man on the radio says. _“You find it awful strange that you should be standing in the road when there’s perfectly good sidewalk to either side of you. But still, you stand. A car honks angrily at you._

_“You are frozen. Your heart pounds and your limbs are weak. You are going to throw up. You throw up. Nothing comes out. You have nothing left. You are sweating profusely. Your eyes stare blearily ahead, sightless. Your throat burns. You hate this. You hate this. You are doing all of this, right now. You need to get out of the road. You get out of the road. You step onto the sidewalk. You can still hear him, the man on the radio, telling you all these things. These things that you are doing, right this second, right now.”_

You become sick again. Nothing comes out then, either. The man on the radio reports as much. Your mouth smells noxious. You breathe out and you smell it and that’s how you know. You stumble.

_“You stumble. Old Woman Josie’s house is to your left, though you do not know that this is Old Woman Josie’s house. You do know that angels live there, however. Whether it was the heavenly light or the sign “Angels’ Residence” that tipped you off does not matter. Nothing matters. You feel hysteria bubble up in your chest, manic and barely restrained._

_“You want him to stop, the man on the radio. You feel violated. Your life is your own; it is not meant to be narrated to the public. It is not meant to be narrated at all. Your autonomy is lost. You have become part of a story. You are the means to an end, an idle source of amusement for the intrepid reader or listener or heaven knows what else. People you don’t know will know that you once wet your pants on a rollercoaster when you were ten and your_ dreadful _brother laughed and cackled for ages. It’s horrifying to consider.”_

You run. You run and you stumble and you weep and you hold a letter in one hand and a sweater in another and some people stop and they stare at you, they stare at you with the eyes of the boy from Luftknarp, that sweet boy from Luftknarp. His _eyes._ You wonder about him. He was beautiful. He was so beautiful and it broke your heart.

 _“You could never find Luftknarp on a map, you remember. Never, after that experience,”_ the man on the radio says. _“But you still think of him and his family and his_ eyes. _That drawn face and those eyes, those gray eyes. He had blond hair, the boy from Luftknarp. He was a white farm boy with skeletal shoulders and sturdy hands. He had a sharp nose and a thin brow and protruding ears. He_ hated _you,”_ the man on the radio says. _“He_ hated _you_ so much. _He_ hated _you and he stared at you with those eyes of his, those stricken eyes, as though you had done him a great disservice, had betrayed him through the act of living as you did. You were no longer Welcome! in Luftknarp and you were never Welcome! into the beautiful young man from Luftknarp’s arms. His sinewy, stringy arms. You loved him. He was the first person you ever loved. And now everyone listening to the radio knows about him, the beautiful young man from Luftknarp. Everyone knows that you proposed to him when you first saw him because you ~~~*~~ fell in love **instantly** ~~*~~~ and he turned you down. He took one look at you and he _cried. _He absolutely cried, listeners.”_

You pant. You wipe sweat from your brow. You can’t do this. You can’t _exist_ in a world where the man on the radio narrates your existence. You can’t exist in a world where you can’t read your own damn letters and you’re sweating for twelve hours and freezing for another twelve and this place, this damnable place had soothed you with promises of _Welcome!_ when you are anything but.

You run past Telly’s Barbershop and Big Rico’s Pizza Parlor ( _no one_ does a slice like Big Rico) and City Council and _this town._ You need to leave. You need to escape the radio.

 _“But the radio keeps playing. You hear it even when you run into a deserted parking lot, covering your ears. You hear it permeate through every scintilla of your body. It is dark and warm and sonorous and sinuous and insidious. It is deep. It_ punctuates _sentences, like an enjoyable punch to the gut. It crawls into you, like a parasitic worm._

_“You run past the Moonlite All-Nite Diner and you run past the Arby’s with the strange lights overhead. You run and you run. The red light comes into view, above. It blinks its great eye at you, from atop the radio tower. The man on the radio is there, you think. The man on the radio, the man saying these very words, the man ripping your thoughts out of your skull, is in that building, that radio station. He is broadcasting at this time. This is live._

_“You need to find the man on the radio and make him stop. You need a lot of things. A reasonable shirt to put on your back that doesn’t have tacky Christmas art marching across the chest, for example. A working car. An ability to open this letter in your hand and a few less stereotypical story elements._

_“It could certainly have been worse, the man on the radio reasons as he thinks on your situation. You could have ended up in_ Desert Bluffs, _after all._ Ugh! _Now there’s a place you wouldn’t be caught dead in. Desert Bluffs only takes in living meat, after all, not that I particularly blame them in that aspect. You start to feel very grateful that you are not in Desert Bluffs. Yes, you do.”_

You hiss as bramble scratches against your skin, squeezing between dead bushes and trees and barbed wired fence as you make your way from an empty lot to… To the radio station? Is that a radio station? You can’t tell. It occurs to you that you are nowhere near a building or a radio.

 _“This strikes you as horribly strange. You still hear his voice. He’s discussing your confusion at this very moment. Who is this man? What right does he have, to broadcast your struggles? What a_ jerk, _you think. And speaking of jerks!_

_“There is a man, amongst the not-forest (it’s a desert after all, for Lovecraftian deities’ sakes.) He grabs at you, eyes wild and searching. You recoil. This young man’s name is Earl Harlan. What is he doing behind the empty lot? Who knows? Who cares? He’s certainly not Welcome! here.”_

Earl Harlan as you know him thanks to the man on the radio, who tells you his name, says, “I heard about you! I heard about you and _God,_ I thought you were done with this horrible strange town, I had hoped, I—”

_“I’d expect something better than this from Earl Harlan. Perhaps you need to re-earn your Signature Civilian Apathy Badge.”_

Earl Harlan makes a constipated face.

You try to ask Earl Harlan what is happening, where you are, _anything,_ but your throat burns. It burns and burns. Earl Harlan makes another, different constipated face. “What are you _doing_ here?” he asks you, voice low and strained, eyes haunted and sunken.

 _“Yeah, well, what are_ you _doing here, Earl Harlan?”_

“I already earned my Outdoors Expedition and Survival Badge,” Earl Harlan says, hiding his face with a palm. “But what are you doing here?” You don’t know. If only you could open the damn letter and remember. You need to find a way to…to orient yourself.

 _“But Earl Harlan doesn’t understand any of that. Of_ course _he doesn’t understand! No one understands you! No one understands, not even the man on the radio. Not even the beautiful young man from Luftknarp. No one. You feel despair crawl into your throat and suffocate you.”_

That beautiful boy and that empty look in his eyes. He was beaten, but by what you cannot tell. You think about the beautiful young man from Luftknarp a lot. He haunts you. He was so gorgeous. You don’t know what you did that was wrong. You would have married him. You really would have.

“I told you,” Earl Harlan continues. Oh, Earl. Of _course_ Earl Harlan would be out behind the Desert Flower Bowling Alley Arcade and Fun Complex, “to leave. I told you that once they…they did whatever, that you had a _chance,_ you could _escape,_ you could _forget,_ you could… Don’t tell me the Council sent you back this way!”

 _“I’m going to stop you right there,_ Earl Harlan. _Of course it’s the City Council! You’re beginning to sound like certain other spoil sports here in town, I tell you. You’re a real downer and no one here likes you. Either of you. No one. No one understands and no one likes you. The beautiful young man from Luftknarp didn’t like you. Larry Leroy from the edge of town doesn’t like you. Earl Harlan doesn’t like you._ I _don’t like you.”_

You swallow the bile rising in your throat. That’d be the third time and that’s really not attractive. Not that you particularly care what Earl Harlan thinks of you, but you need to maintain some sense of self-dignity.

“How did you even _get_ here?” Earl Harlan asks. “Does your family know? You look different, I don’t… I didn’t recognize you, at first. You’re, you’re like… Did you come from the direction of the Arby’s? There are new lights above the Arby’s now. Do you think you had something to do with it? Why can’t they let you leave? Do they let any of us leave? Have you heard the radio? Oh, God, have you _heard_ the radio?”

 _“Earl Harlan is asking very stupid questions of you. The man on the radio—me—does not approve of Earl Harlan’s tomfoolery. He’s such a spoilsport, that Earl. Don’t you just hate him? What is he doing here? What are any of us doing here? Do we even exist? Who cares? Does it matter? Why are you here? How are you? Who are you?_ What _are you?_

 _“Look at you! Scrambling about behind the Desert Flower Bowling Alley Arcade and Fun Complex, caught in some dead bushes!_ Look at you! Look! DO YOU SEE? DO YOU SEE YOURSELF, STANDING THERE, TALKING TO **EARL HARLAN** , OF ALL PEOPLE? _LOOK! LOOK AT YOURSELF! LOO-”_

You gasp and

.

.

. the noise stops.

Everything stops.

.

.

.’…’.

Earl Harlan doesn’t say a word.

You don’t either.

Everything is quiet.

There is no man on the radio, anymore.

 _“What did you do?”_ someone asks, somewhere. You think you hear it. Maybe, maybe not. Earl Harlan gapes at you. He looks like he’s drowning, sick and sad and frightened by changes in people and places and concepts he loves, frightened by the universe, and the wretched shadows that trace your calves. Poor Earl, you think, distantly.

“What _are_ you?” bursts out of his mouth and his eyes are like the people on the street, his eyes are like Larry Leroy from the edge of town, his eyes are like the beautiful young man from Luftknarp.

You can’t answer him because you do not know.

Earl really _is_ making a big deal out of it. What is _he,_ after all? What is anybody? What was that man on the radio? _He_ wasn’t human, you’d tell anybody who would listen. Something like that is positively _in_ human. Something like that should not be _Welcome!_ anywhere.

The silence is deafening. It is like a great Void.

“Is he dead?” Earl Harlan asks, trembling. Young, so young, and his eyes are the beautiful young man from Luftknarp’s.

You don’t know. You ignore him. You concentrate on the silence, on the blinking red light in the distance, on the freezing air against your torso. You think about the beautiful young man from Luftknarp and your chest constricts.

“Could you please just _talk_ to me? Are you okay? Please? I…” Earl Harlan fumbles with his words, Earl Harlan has a pallor to him, Earl Harlan is beautiful and you fall in love and you ignore him.

What’s happening? Where is the man on the radio? At the radio station, obviously, you tell yourself. What kind of stupid question is that?

“You weren’t supposed to come back here,” Earl Harlan says morosely. “You promised. You promised me you’d drive and drive and _never_ come back.”

You brush past Earl Harlan because you have a radio station to reach. You have a man on the radio to confront. You have a plot to resolve and a red herring to ignore.

The red light on the top of the radio station blinks its great eye in the night. You keep your sights on it. You tumble through potholes and thorny bushes and gritty sand but none of this matters. Only the radio and the silence concern you. Consume you.

Everything is simultaneously an uphill trek and a downward slope. You feel as though you are back in Svitz, with your mysterious partner. Who was he? What did he want? Why can’t you remember him? You were pressed against him every morning, face crushed into the grassy countryside, and you can’t remember him.

You eventually drop your sweater, its frayed edges caught on the branch of a morose tree. A sort of mania wells in you, bubbling and gurgling at the back of your throat. You might drown in your own hysteria, at this rate. The sky mocks you. The angels lurk in the dark, licking their chops and flicking their spidery limbs. They want you. They want to crawl into your mouth.

You gasp and spit and run.

You taste rotted food in your mouth despite having not eaten in days. It’s the vomit, you think. It’s rotting inside of you. You’re not spitting enough. You need to get it out. It’s molded over, it’s the fuzz in your mouth. You’re dying. You’re a horrible ghoul and you’re dying, dying in the frigid desert air.

“Can I help you?” Intern Hermona says, not looking up from her paperwork. You do not know that she is Intern Hermona, of course, until your eyes drift to her shirt, which has a tag stating _Welcome! My name is Intern  Hermona._

You try to speak. You try to say, ‘Where is he? _Where is he?’_ Nothing escapes. You’re so frustrated, you could cry. You have no liquid. You actually can’t cry, no matter how frustrated you become.

Intern Hermona looks up. Her skin becomes ashy. She gapes at you, like a fish. A bloated, dead fish. Unblinking. Asphyxiated. She rolls back a few inches in her chair, lips finally slapping together a few times. Her hands scramble at her sides.

You move past her.

To your left, down the hallway, is a door. Behind that door lies a recording booth. You know this because there is a window. And in that recording booth, a man is seated.

You twist the knob.

It is unlocked.

You push the door.

It opens.

 _“And now: Traffic,”_ the man on the radio says. _“It appears that gelatinous orbs have been raining on downtown. The Sheriff’s Secret Police recommends that you take one home today. Who knows? It may make a nice family pet.”_

This man is neither tall nor short, nor fat nor thin.

_“In other news, John Peters—you know, the farmer?—has an update on this year’s outlook for imaginary corn.”_

He has a head. And two arms.

_“It seems that an imaginary drought is causing a lot of trouble for him. Generous government subsidies may not be able to cover the losses.”_

He has skin. He has lungs.

 _“Now, a brief editorial, if I may? Yes, well, we all know how vital John Peters—you know, the farmer?—and his imaginary corn crop are to the town economy. Never mind that we live in a desert and nothing has grown in his peach orchard for…well, since ever. That imaginary corn—and who doesn’t love imaginary corn?—is one of our chief exports. It is a matter of_ pride, _Night Vale!”_

He is wearing a shirt. He is touching a set of dials and buttons.

 _“And now,”_ the man on the radio says, _“the Weather.”_

-m,.,.mn,..sdnakj.fdhos;.

He turns to you. And _his face!_ Oh, oh his _face!_ A man that is neither tall nor short nor thin nor fat and a _face!_ With two eyes and a nose and a mouth, just like all the others. Two ears, even. Just like the beautiful young man from Luftknarp. But the beautiful young man from Luftknarp was pale and gangly, with wide, dead eyes and soft, pursed lips. The beautiful young man from Luftknarp’s face was not symmetric. His face was delicately askew, one ear taller, a twisted nose, a furrowed brow, and eyes like Earl Harlan. He was blond. He had narrow cheekbones and slumped, defeated posture. He was so beautiful. You would have married him. You would have spent the rest of your life with him. You really would have.

The man on the radio is none of these things. And…and he _smiles._ Oh, his _smile!_ It is horrifying. It wrenches something from you, something you never knew existed, let alone aware of its sacredness, and you feel violated and betrayed. He claps his hands and lets out a sigh of delight. “Oh, _Cecil!_ I’ve been _waiting_ for you come back! Well! That explains _everything,_ now doesn’t it?”

You can’t speak. You know you can’t—you’ve tried this whole story—so you don’t reply. This does not deter the man on the radio, however.

“You must have gotten my letter,” he says.

You’ve never opened the letter. Have you? Did you? Not in the last six thousand words of this, at least.

So you open your letter. It feels wrong to do it in front of someone, this man on the radio in particular. And here is what your letter says:

 

**Dear Mr. Palmer,**

**Congratulations on your successful re-education and initiation into Radio Broadcasting. I really apologize about the whole “shadow monsters slowly devouring your soul” schtick, but if there’s anything we pride in Night Vale, it’s tradition, after all. Hell, we even listened to those City Hall tablets when you were just starting out and made the worst coffee I’ve ever seen an intern prepare.**

**I’ve already sorted out twenty of the fifty-six documents needed for City Council approval. We can go over everything once you get home.**

**Congratulations,**

**Leonard Burton**

 

Your eyes lift from the paper. This man on the radio, he is Leonard Burton. Leonard Burton is smiling.

Your throat is as dry as the desert air outside the studio. He’s still smiling. Oh, that _wicked_ smile! Curse that smile! Curse this horribly sudden plot twist! Curses, curses, curses!

“Any more questions?” Leonard Burton asks you.

Where is your brother? You want to ask? The beautiful man from Luftknarp? Your mother? Earl Harlan? John Peters? Larry Leroy? Are _any_ of you real? _Who are you people?_

The shadows are angels, and they hiss static in your ear, fingers tapping against your lips, waiting to get inside.

You walk toward Leonard Burton. Leonard Burton stops smiling.

“What are you doing, kid?”

You keep walking closer.

“Cecil?”

You slowly wrap your fingers around Leonard Burton’s neck. Leonard Burton does not move. He does not smile. He does not speak.

He does speak, “Could you speed this up? The weather’s almost over.”

The weather. The weather. Static in your ears, shadows, the sun, no moon, no mountains, cars that mean nothing. A sick, wet thing writhing in your stomach, your throat, your brain, worms. You break Leonard Burton’s neck. The weather tape continues, stretching into eternity, infinity, my life is narrated, my narrator is dead, but my life continues to narrate, I am narrating, I am narrating this, I am narrating my own story now, this is terrifying, this is _horrifying,_ I am **slack** and **sallow** , unsmiling and imperfect, horrific, horrific, I killed a man and I don’t know why, the horror, the horror

I open my mouth.

_“I’m terribly sorry about the slight delay, listeners. Welcome! back to our previously scheduled broadcast. This is Cecil, here to take over for a bit. While I’m getting the Community Calendar, why don’t you have a word from our sponsors?_

_**“Limbs, screeching. Eyes, searching. Ears, moaning. Lips, silent. Do you feel un Welcome!? Do you feel unfulfilled? Do you feel like the world moves too fast and results too slow? Here’s our solution: Don’t! Stop feeling that way right now. What matters is who we are today. And ** _

**today** _**is Snapple**. **Welcome! to your new life. Don’t worry; you won’t miss your old one. I hear the old one was kind of flea-bitten, anyways. Or maybe that was your wardrobe. You should **_ **really _change your wardrobe, by the way._**

**_ Welcome! _ **

**_ Welcome! _ **

**_ Welcome!” _ **

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Today's proverb: Actions speak louder than words. They are screaming over words. They are roaring, shrieking. Think on your sins.


End file.
